Starlight Ranch Part 12

"I'm proud to shake hands with you, young gentleman. I've heard all about you from the Fifth. You ought to go to West Point and be a cavalry officer."

"There's nothing I so much wish, general," stammered Ralph, with beaming eyes and burning cheeks.

"Then we'll telegraph his name to Was.h.i.+ngton this very day, gentlemen. I was asked to designate some young man for West Point who thoroughly deserved it, and is not this appointment well won?"

FROM "THE POINT" TO THE PLAINS.

CHAPTER I.

A CADET'S SISTER.

She was standing at the very end of the forward deck, and, with flus.h.i.+ng cheeks and sparkling eyes, gazing eagerly upon the scene before her.

Swiftly, smoothly rounding the rugged promontory on the right, the steamer was just turning into the highland "reach" at Fort Montgomery and heading straight away for the landings on the sunset sh.o.r.e. It was only mid-May, but the winter had been mild, the spring early, and now the heights on either side were clothed in raiment of the freshest, coolest green; the vines were climbing in luxuriant leaf all over the face of the rocky scarp that hemmed the swirling tide of the Hudson; the radiance of the evening suns.h.i.+ne bathed all the eastern sh.o.r.es in mellow light and left the dark slopes and deep gorges of the opposite range all the deeper and darker by contrast. A lively breeze had driven most of the pa.s.sengers within doors as they sped through the broad waters of the Tappan Zee, but, once within the sheltering traverses of Dunderberg and the heights beyond, many of their number reappeared upon the promenade deck, and first among them was the bonnie little maid now clinging to the guard-rail at the very prow, and, heedless of fluttering skirt or fly-away curl, watching with all her soul in her bright blue eyes for the first glimpse of the haven where she would be. No eyes on earth look so eagerly for the grim, gray _facade_ of the riding-hall or the domes and turrets of the library building as those of a girl who has spent the previous summer at West Point.

Utterly absorbed in her watch, she gave no heed to other pa.s.sengers who presently took their station close at hand. One was a tall, dark-eyed, dark-haired young lady in simple and substantial travelling-dress. With her were two men in tweeds and Derby hats, and to these companions she constantly turned with questions as to prominent objects in the rich and varied landscape. It was evident that she was seeing for the first time sights that had been described to her time and again, for she was familiar with every name. One of the party was a man of over fifty years,--bronzed of face and gray of hair, but with erect carriage and piercing black eyes that spoke of vigor, energy, and probably of a life in the open air. It needed not the tri-colored b.u.t.ton of the Loyal Legion in the lapel of his coat to tell that he was a soldier. Any one who chose to look--and there were not a few--could speedily have seen, too, that these were father and daughter.

The other man was still taller than the dark, wiry, slim-built soldier, but in years he was not more than twenty-eight or nine. His eyes, brows, hair, and the heavy moustache that drooped over his mouth were all of a dark, soft brown. His complexion was clear and ruddy; his frame powerful and athletic. Most of the time he stood a silent but attentive listener to the eager talk between the young lady and her father, but his kindly eyes rarely left her face; he was ready to respond when she turned to question him, and when he spoke it was with the unmistakable intonation of the South.

The deep, mellow tones of the bell were booming out their landing signal as the steamer shot into the shadow of a high, rocky cliff. Far aloft on the overhanging piazzas of a big hotel, fluttering handkerchiefs greeted the pa.s.sengers on the decks below. Many eyes were turned thither in recognition of the salute, but not those of the young girl at the bow.

One might, indeed, have declared her resentful of this intermediate stop. The instant the gray walls of the riding-school had come into view she had signalled, eagerly, with a wave of her hand, to a gentleman and lady seated in quiet conversation under the shelter of the deck.

Presently the former, a burly, broad-shouldered man of forty or thereabouts, came sauntering forward and stood close behind her.

"Well, Nan! Most there, I see. Think you can hold on five minutes longer, or shall I toss you over and let you swim for it?"

For answer Miss Nan clasps a wooden pillar in her gray-gloved hands, and tilts excitedly on the toes of her tiny boots, never once relaxing her gaze on the dock a mile or more away up-stream.

"Just think of being so near w.i.l.l.y--and all of them--and not seeing one to speak to until after parade," she finally says.

"Simply inhuman!" answers her companion with commendable gravity, but with humorous twinkle about his eyes. "Is it worth all the long journey, and all the excitement in which your mother tells me you've been plunged for the past month?"

"Worth it, Uncle Jack?" and the blue eyes flash upon him indignantly.

"Worth it? You wouldn't ask if you knew it all, as I do."

"Possibly not," says Uncle Jack, whimsically. "I haven't the advantage of being a girl with a brother and a baker's dozen of beaux in bell b.u.t.tons and gray. I'm only an old fossil of a 'cit,' with a scamp of a nephew and that limited conception of the delights of West Point which one can derive from running up there every time that versatile youngster gets into a new sc.r.a.pe. You'll admit my opportunities have been frequent."

"It isn't w.i.l.l.y's fault, and you know it, Uncle Jack, though we all know how good you've been; but he's had more bad luck and--and--injustice than any cadet in the corps. Lots of his cla.s.smates told me so."

"Yes," says Uncle Jack, musingly. "That is what your blessed mother, yonder, wrote me when I went up last winter, the time Billy submitted that explanation to the commandant with its pleasing reference to the fox that had lost its tail--you doubtless recall the incident--and came within an ace of dismissal in consequence."

"I don't care!" interrupts Miss Nan, with flas.h.i.+ng eyes. "Will had provocation enough to say much worse things; Jimmy Frazer wrote me so, and said the whole cla.s.s was sticking up for him."

"I do not remember having had the honor of meeting Jimmy Frazer,"

remarks Uncle Jack, with an aggravating drawl that is peculiar to him.

"Possibly he was one of the young gentlemen who didn't call, owing to some temporary impediment in the way of light prison----"

"Yes; and all because he took Will's part, as I believe," is the impetuous reply. "Oh! I'll be so thankful when they're out of it all."

"So will they, no doubt. 'Sticking up'--wasn't that Mr. Frazer's expression?--for Bill seems to have been an expensive luxury all round.

Wonder if sticking up is something they continue when they get to their regiments? Billy has two or three weeks yet in which to ruin his chances of ever reaching one, and he has exhibited astonis.h.i.+ng apt.i.tude for tripping himself up thus far."

"Uncle Jack! How can you speak so of w.i.l.l.y, when he is so devoted to you? When he gets to his regiment there won't be any Lieutenant Lee to nag and worry him night and day. _He's_ the cause of all the trouble."

"That so?" drawls Uncle Jack. "I didn't happen to meet Mr. Lee, either,--he was away on leave; but as Bill and your mother had some such views, I looked into things a bit. It appears to be a matter of record that my enterprising nephew had more demerit before the advent of Mr.

Lee than since. As for 'extras' and confinements, his stock was always big enough to bear the market down to bottom prices."

The boat is once more under way, and a lull in the chat close at hand induces Uncle Jack to look about him. The younger of the two men lately standing with the dark-eyed girl has quietly withdrawn, and is now shouldering his way to a point out of ear-shot. There he calmly turns and waits; his glance again resting upon her whose side he has so suddenly quitted. She has followed him with her eyes until he stops; then with heightened color resumes a low-toned chat with her father.

Uncle Jack is a keen observer, and his next words are inaudible except to his niece.

"Nan, my child, I apprehend that remarks upon the characteristics of the officers at the Point had best be confined to the bosom of the family.

We may be in their very midst."

She turns, flus.h.i.+ng, and for the first time her blue eyes meet the dark ones of the older girl. Her cheeks redden still more, and she whirls about again.

"I can't help it, Uncle Jack," she murmurs. "I'd just like to tell them all what I think of Will's troubles."

"Oh! Candor is to be admired of all things," says Uncle Jack, airily.

"Still it is just as well to observe the old adage, 'Be sure you're right,' etc. Now _I_ own to being rather fond of Bill, despite all the worry he has given your mother, and all the bother he has been to me----"

"All the worry that others have given _him_, you ought to say, Uncle Jack."

"W-e-ll, har-d-ly. It didn't seem to me that the corps, as a rule, thought Billy the victim of persecution."

"They all tell _me_ so, at least," is the indignant outburst.

"Do they, Nan? Well, of course, that settles it. Still, there were a few who reluctantly admitted having other views when I pressed them closely."

"Then they were no friends of w.i.l.l.y's, or mine either!"

"Now, do you know, I thought just the other way? I thought one of them, especially, a very stanch friend of Billy's and yours, too, Nan, but Billy seems to consider advisers in the light of adversaries."

A moment's pause. Then, with cheeks still red, and plucking at the rope netting with nervous fingers, Miss Nan essays a tentative. Her eyes are downcast as she asks,--

"I suppose you mean Mr. Stanley?"

"The very man, Nanette; very much of a man to my thinking."

The bronzed soldier standing near cannot but have heard the name and the words. His face takes on a glow and the black eyes kindle.

"Mr. Stanley would not say to _me_ that w.i.l.l.y is to blame," pouts the maiden, and her little foot is beating impatiently tattoo on the deck.

"Neither would I--just now--if I were Mr. Stanley; but all the same, he decidedly opposed the view that Mr. Lee was 'down on Billy,' as your mother seems to think."